news about cheap fares and airlines from travel search engine Trabber

Finnair will enable passengers to send mobile text messages and e-mails on flights to the Far East starting next month, the Finnish airline said Tuesday.

The service will become possible on satellite telephones provided at each seat of the airline’s new Airbus A340 aircraft, to be delivered in June. It will first be available on routes from Helsinki to the Japanese cities of Tokyo and Nagoya, and Shanghai, China.

source: International Herald Tribune

Emirates has been voted ‘Best Middle East Airline’ by readers of the Daily Telegraph’s luxury travel magazine Ultratravel. The airline was announced as the winner of the prestigious Ultratravel 100 award during a ceremony at the InterContinental London Park Lane, attended by key representatives from the travel industry.

source: Easier

Eos Airlines announces today that it has increased its fleet to four Boeing 757-200ER aircraft in preparation for future new routes and additional frequencies to its current schedule. A fifth aircraft is scheduled to be received in December with negotiations for a sixth underway. As part of an “‘uncrowded'” travel experience, the planes will be outfitted for Eos Class service in a configuration which features individual “‘suites'” for every guest, with 21 sq. ft. of personal space and a patented, award-winning seat that converts to a 6’6″ horizontally flat bed. This innovative cabin design was one of the many reasons Eos was named 2007’s “‘Best Long-Haul Business Airline'” by Business Travel World.

source: earthtimes.org

For the sake of its staff, its customers and its shareholders, it is time to take the British out of British Airways.

This defenestration is not intended as a punishment, but as a liberation. The airline, rebranded as BA and rebooted as a global carrier challenging for dominance in Europe, could finally unburden itself of its lingering tendency to expect more from Government than it gets, recast its relationship with the British people and refocus attention on the many things it is getting right.

For BA, under the leadership of Willie Walsh has been a success. Since he took over in 2005, the company has reduced debt levels to their lowest in nearly 20 years, halved the pension deficit, renegotiated working practices with the vast majority of staff ahead of the move to Terminal 5 and seen its share price rise by 66 per cent.

source: timesonline.co.uk

Italian rival airline Air One emerged Monday as the frontrunner in the three-way race for Alitalia as Treasury officials met to discuss which bidders will make it to the next phase of the auction.

Three consortiums are vying for a minimum 39.9 per cent stake in the troubled national carrier, which according to figures published ahead of Tuesday’s board meeting lost more than 400 million euros (542 million dollars) during the course of 2006.

Of these, Air One is the favourite among analysts because it is seen as being in the best position to guarantee the company’s Italian identity, as requested by the Treasury.

source: monstersandcritics.com

While the rest of Europe’s airlines are grounded, waiting for March 2008 to take advantage of the EU-US agreement to liberalise the transatlantic airline market, the Irish flag carrier is in full flight. Under an agreement negotiated with the US authorities, the airline has created its own open skies environment between Ireland and America a full year before its competitors.

By opening new routes, dropping out of the oneworld alliance and creating a link with JetBlue, the low-cost US carrier, Aer Lingus has a model for operating in a liberalised transatlantic environment that will be looked at, and possibly copied, by its European peers.

Given the relatively short head start Aer Lingus has over its European competitors it is perhaps no surprise that the company announced new routes to three US cities within an hour of the EU-US open skies agreement being ratified in March. Services to Washington Dulles will start in September, with San Francisco and Orlando being introduced in October.

source: telegraph.co.uk

Ryanair ticket promotions arrive so frequently that investors tend to ignore them. Sure, a £15 flight to Frankfurt sounds like suicidal economics but why worry if profits are soaring?

But this week was different. Europe’s largest budget airline launched its biggest ever fare sale, days after admitting it was struggling to fill its planes. Analysts were extremely surprised to see that the airline was discounting 10m tickets during its most profitable time of year. For all the regulation bluster from Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary about “kicking the competition”, something was wrong. Some analysts have also asked if the onslaught from environmental organisations is having an effect.

source: Guardian.co.uk

A former Hawaiian Airlines flight attendant has been awarded $510,000 by a Circuit Court jury in a sexual harassment case involving a pilot and the airline.

The former attendant reported to her supervisors that the pilot, Gary J. Kissinger, grabbed her buttock while passengers were leaving the plane after an interisland flight.

According to the woman’s attorneys, Bruce Kim and Ronald Albu, her supervisors didn’t take any action to protect her. The attendant claimed the company failed to take her complaint seriously when she reported Kissinger had sexually harassed her and that he was not adequately reprimanded for his actions.

source: msnbc

The wreckage of a Kenya Airways plane that crashed with 114 people on board was found in a swamp a short distance from Cameroon’s Douala airport on Sunday, officials said, but there was no word of any survivors.

The Boeing 737-800, carrying passengers from more than 20 countries, vanished on Saturday shortly after taking off from Douala for Nairobi in torrential rain.

The wreckage was found 20 km (12 miles) southeast of the airport along the plane’s flight path, Kenya Airways said.

source: Reuters

Four JetBlue employees and a city corrections officer have been charged with stealing credit card numbers from several unsuspecting airline passengers.

Prosecutors said the five used the cards to go on a spending spree at restaurants, liquor stores, and shops including Bloomingdale’s and Victoria’s Secret.

Investigators began looking at the group after one traveler rushing to catch a flight accidentally left his credit card behind at a JetBlue counter at John F. Kennedy International Airport. Later, someone used the card to run up $508 in charges, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said.

source: USA Today